


Count Back From Ten (Remix)

by amindamazed (hophophop)



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, I'm Sorry, Remix, Sexual Content, Sharing a Bed, but no sex while locked in a trunk, locked in a trunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 12:58:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4180716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hophophop/pseuds/amindamazed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“I've come to appreciate the premise of partnership. It's far more intricate than I had previously imagined.”</em>
</p><p>“I’m entirely self-sufficient,” he’d said, but it could have been either of them saying those words. They’d been true once but no longer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Count Back From Ten (Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [time_converges](https://archiveofourown.org/users/time_converges/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Four Times Sherlock Touched Joan (And One Time She Touched Him)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002927) by [time_converges](https://archiveofourown.org/users/time_converges/pseuds/time_converges). 



> As I said in my comment below, I decided to follow the Remix encouragement to treat this assignment as a challenge and attempted my first M-for-sexual-content fic. At this point I doubt I'll write my own Joan/Sherlock as that's not canon on the show as I see it, but I won't rule out future remixes...

10\. always

Sherlock pulled off her shirt when she said yes and murmured under his breath as he slowly slid his mouth across and down her body, firm sucking kisses alternating sides below her breasts. “…heaven rue, seven too, eight alls, eight fall…” He continued lower to let his teeth scrape with precision over each hip bone but growled “lick” into their shadows. Yes please, she thought, followed by a frown when instead he popped up to plant a firm buss at the base of her chest bone with a quiet “—ernum” and she laughed when she realized he was naming her bones.

He frowned in turn, mock serious, and moved his head toward the apex of her right elbow. “A true detective must always seek opportunities to practice and apply knowledge, Watson.” He spoke into the tender skin and then nipped harder on the bony point. “Ole—“

“Olecannon, yes, very good,” she interrupted, and used her biceps and flexor carpi ulnaris to draw him close.

_9\. breathe_

_When she woke to his touch, Sherlock was sitting perpendicular to her on the plush burgundy couch, his hand spanning her knee where it was propped on the ottoman, digging deep into the stiff muscle above. Her breath caught when he located each hot spot and pressed into sore ligaments and tendons, but he eased back each time to massage out the pain before she had to ask him to stop. “Keep that up, and I’ll retire my foam roller,” she said with a smile, and her breath caught again, more ahhh-hah! than sigh, as his capable fingers sought other pressure points further up her inner thigh._

8\. ever

The shrill beeps of a bus lowering its wheelchair ramp pierced his skull, and the incongruity of the sound coming from somewhere overhead roused him to actual consciousness. Whether that was an improvement to his situation remained to be determined. His immediate circumstances left quite a bit to be desired: a foul-tasting rag stuffed in his mouth, hands and ankles bound tightly behind his back with insufficient clearance to extricate himself. The restraints bit sharply, but sensation in his extremities was disturbingly muted. He couldn’t see in the dark, but at least he wasn’t blindfolded as well. Small mercy.

The strong tang of motor oil, gasoline, and what might most charitably be termed “ _old_ -car smell” pained his sinuses and confirmed his location. If he could manage his respiration properly, he might avoid carbon dioxide poisoning. He blamed the fugue of carbon monoxide exposure for his inability to recall which carbon -oxide overdose was fatal sooner. No matter; the boot wasn’t airtight, after all — he could hear the roar of traffic outside; a motorway overpass most likely, given the direction of the sounds — although the exchange of fresh air for stale was slow, especially now that the vehicle had been abandoned.

Still the situation was hardly dire. Must be thirty-odd hours now that Watson had been tracking his abductors, and after the first ten she would have engaged reinforcement. They would be closing in by now. Marcus would be assisting her, would insist she not do this alone. Watson should not be alone, not ever again. Of course once he was located, it would be bare minutes before the recriminations of recklessness would begin, and no doubt he’d wish for the relative peace and quiet of his current hold. He forced himself to stop imagining her standing in front of him and concentrated on tensing and releasing muscle groups to get his circulation flowing. She’d be here soon.

_7\. trace_

_Kneeling over him, Watson pressed palms into his chest, pinning him in place by intent if not force. He held still despite the shiver as she slid firm hands up along his arms where they lay curved above his head, lifting her fingers so that only her thumbs traced the cups of inner elbow and down the tendons to the base of his wrists. Before she could shift back and retrace the path with her fingernails, he clasped her hands, and she gradually let her weight drop until her breasts brushed his chest. She teased her nipples across his in figure-eights before collapsing all the way down, her arms outstretched, and her hands holding his tight._

6\. only

It was something they had in common, that ability to slip quickly into sleep at the expedient moment. She exercised it much more often than he did, of course, and stayed there longer. That night in the motel, she shoved his false solicitude to the floor with her trousers and left him to wrestle with his indecision on his own; she was asleep before his head touched the pillow in the dark.

He had no plans to sleep himself despite her scolding, not in the middle of a case while they lingered in an insecure safe house. He couldn’t feasibly postpone sleep for the duration of a week-long investigation, but he kept strict tabs on himself, and having caught a few hours the morning before, it wasn’t on the agenda tonight. But he also hadn’t planned on that thirty-minute foot-chase this afternoon or the lack of both internet and mobile access in this unfortunately named “dead zone.”

Watson sighed as she shifted to a deeper stage of sleep, triggering his own autonomic response of a yawn that cracked both sides of his jaw. Their case files were at the station. He didn’t even have a book at hand, nor did Watson, except for the vapid pulp fiction she kept on her phone (and besides he’d already read all of it). He could review the details once more. He could go into a trance. Or he could take advantage of the downtime and enforced inactivity to bank a few more hours of sleep that could be cashed in later.

The pulse under his palm alerted him to the strange circumstance of waking pressed against another body. Not the first time it had happened, certainly, but a rare occurrence. He did not mix somnolence and sex. At the same time, full-body contact such as what he currently sensed only occurred during coitus or combat. He was clothed, as was the torso his arm embraced, making the former less likely, while lying in calm repose on a bed would tend to rule out the latter. As he carefully pulled back, stirring the still air between them, his nose identified her unique familiar scent and solved the mystery a split second before recall did.

_5\. touch_

_He traced her outer lips lightly with his tongue and then pressed to slip beneath and repeat the touch even lighter within. She squirmed with frustration, but he shifted with her and added suction to maintain contact, as she’d hoped. Eventually he brought fingers into play, testing and teasing carefully and unbearably slowly with his mouth and breath and hands as one by one tumblers fell into place and at last the tight clench of tension inside her burst open._

4\. together

“Dammit!” He slammed the edge of his fist on the table: Still no reply from Watson. Bell’s shoulders raised in rebuke, phone held to his ear as he waited for the update from the warehouse. He didn’t turn around, so Sherlock left the conference room and resumed pacing in the station’s corridor to pull himself together. He hadn’t intended the exclamation to be quite so loud. He hadn’t intended to still be in the station quite so long, hours now since the last text she’d sent. _Found some empty boxes from the lab in the dumpster. Place deserted, going to check it out_. And then nothing. He’d been engaged with the reconnaissance team at corporate headquarters, a stupid, stupid waste of time, nothing new to be known, incompetents all around. Himself most of all for assuming the text he’d received and ignored — _Idiot!_ — thirty minutes later was from her, only to discover late, much too late, that it was not.

She hadn’t asked him to join her there, but neither she had told him not to, and he should have gone with her. For all the many benefits of their partnership, it hung around his neck like an albatross now. He came to an abrupt halt at that image, disgusted with himself. Pathetic, unproductive, irrational thinking, if it even qualified as such. Watson deserved better. She needed him at his best now, and he was at his best with her. Surely she was just as engaged in finding her way back as they were in reaching her; the two of them did not require proximity to work as one. The partnership was no deadweight; it was in fact the only reason he was still alive. It could do no less for her.

“Hey!” Bell hurried down the hallway, shrugging on his coat and tossing Sherlock’s to him. “We got something.”

_3\. connect_

_She straddled Sherlock’s lap and reached between them to anchor the condom as they reconnected, already doubly slick, then braced her hands on his shoulders as he arced up into her. They moved together, adjusting an initial awkward syncopation to find a steady rolling rhythm for a time. He moved one hand up to cradle her side for support while the other roved over her, front and back and down. Then she leaned forward to push back with more force, speeding up their pace until she came again, gasping, and he held her steady above him._

2\. alone

He surprised himself when he took Watson’s hand as they stood at Gerald Castoro's grave, and she clearly interpreted it as a gesture of comfort, which of course it was. He just couldn’t say for whom. The last time he stood in a cemetery that wasn’t for a case was when he was eleven, two years after his mother's death. It had been the same time of year, and the crow that called out in protest of their arrival at Castoro’s resting place woke the memory of the one waiting in the tree above the plot where his mother lay.

He’d made the request to go and been driven by his father’s chauffeur, who stayed with the car. He walked alone in a kind of tunnel vision, seeing only the path of grass in front of him, his remaining senses numbed: ears filled with cotton, skin encased in amber. Then the crow cawed right above him, and the world slammed in: odor of damp earth and chrysanthemum, growl of lawn mower and car motor, chill breeze raising gooseflesh and a shudder. He stumbled on the uneven ground and was suddenly at her headstone. But his mother wasn’t there, had never been there, and now all that was left was his father’s last command over her, his stone marker claiming the place she was buried.

In the ground below him was a mahogany box starting to rot and a body crumbling despite the obscene hold of embalming chemicals to delay what should be a natural process. The images from medical books he’d scoured since she died crowded out older memories, and it was her ravaged skeleton he pictured now, every piece labeled and known, the mystery of who she was and where she’d gone effaced by an anatomy lesson. He stood stiffly with impotent fists clenched inside school blazer sleeves an inch too long and didn’t know why he’d come.

Watson shifted, and the slight tug on his fingers dragged him back to the present. She squeezed his hand again, and he felt the connection at once all through his body. It was the strangest sensation, stranger still that it lingered long after she gently pulled away, and he had to let go.

_1\. hold_

_She held her breath in anticipation, equal parts fear and desire, and laid her hand on his face. She felt his touch as connection, always. In her darker moments this troubled her. When she allowed others to get too close, she only ever let them down. So she remained alone, and safe, and tried to leave no trace when she passed. But Sherlock respected few boundaries and disregarded most warnings, and now, somehow, they were together. She didn’t know anyone more capable of protecting himself or more prone to self-neglect. Except maybe herself._

_“I’m entirely self-sufficient,” he’d said, but it could have been either of them saying those words. They’d been true once but no longer. She guided him toward her and touched her lips to his._

_He held his breath at the cascade of sensory input from her hand barely touching his cheek. He felt her touch as connection, always. In his darker moments this troubled him. The loss of autonomy it implied made him feel vulnerable, and at worst it rekindled phantom pain along the scar where an old binding cut deep. Traces of the past always lingered, and no force of will he could exert would ever break their hold. But Watson saw how past and present intertwined, and wanted only to understand, not to sever, and now, somehow, they were together. He didn’t know anyone more capable of communication or more loath to share. Except maybe himself._

_“You know I’m not staying,” she’d said, but it could have been either of them saying those words. They’d been true once but no longer. He fell further into their kiss and held on._


End file.
